For a country that is in economic turmoil and instituting extensive austerity measures, would it not make sense for these (presumably expensive) 'less urgent civil-type proceedings' to be dropped from the court system. Sure, the *IAA may be able to make a good case for why these rules (and court cases) are needed, but when you have many people going hungry and people setting themselves on fire on the streets, Greece has to ask itself where its priorities are.

That's a bit silly. It's like telling a kid who has terminal cancer he doesn't need to carry on going to school because there's no point. Cancer kids and Greece have a right to fully functional lives.

There is another issue: if people knew **AA shenanigans could be put on hold if their country was in dire straights, that would be reason enough for people to demand that the government bankrupt the country. Just for the joy of sticking it up the **AAs' collective ass, ya know...

The no-school argument actually makes some sense. If a kid is going to die in a year, school really serves no purpose. Why not make it optional, and at least let him enjoy the time he has left more? It isn't as if he needs to study for a career.

The no-school argument actually makes some sense. If a kid is going to die in a year, school really serves no purpose. Why not make it optional, and at least let him enjoy the time he has left more? It isn't as if he needs to study for a career.

Here in the US, the answer is "litigation". If the cancer by a long chance is arrested or cured, and he grows up without a full education, his parents will likely sue the state for millions.And get it. Even if it was their idea and choice.

Even if he is dying, some parents might sue over discrimination, allegedly because of their kid being treated differently, but in reality to get money. Nothing like little cancer sick Billy on the stand to get a jury to award big money.

The parents will not win a lawsuit against the government for decisions they themselves made, and again, it would be the parents'/child's option. Not saying kick them out of school, just no reason to force them to go.

If I were 10 and dying of cancer, I would sure as hell rather play at parks and go to Sea World and Disneyland and shit than go to school and learn about basic math and 15th-century history.

Saying that "the government could be sued" over this is exactly what is wrong with this fucking country.

"Then again, I also think people who have diseases from drug abuse such as kidney/liver failure from drinking, lung cancer from smoking, hep-_ from shooting up, etc should be completely denied medical care. You made your bed, now die in it."

Interesting that you didn't include obesity and lack of exercise. That is arguably causing a lot more illness and costs to the healthcare system than drinking and drug use, and like alcohol/drugs it is down the responsibility of the individual.

Your grades don't matter, but if you're in school age then school is where all your friends are. Sure if you'd take time off to go to Disney World that's fine but I think being at home playing all by yourself would just make life seem even less meaningful. I don't know as it's a pretty horrible situation to be in but I think I'd try to maintain normality for as long as possible to stave off the gloom and doom of what's coming. I do feel I'm applying a different standard than I would to myself though, becaus

Be real : Greece doesn't need this now, they first need to get back on their feet.There is nothing copyright groups can achieve by this : if you don't have enough to buy food, you are not going to buy music/videos just because you can't pirate them.

I suspect a different reason : using the 'piracy' excuse to block websites, it opens the door for blocking any website. For example any website which provides a dissident voice to the government, or is used

The EU works like this: ministers from all countries come together and decide on certain directives -- a description of how the laws of all countries should behave. Then they make a contract on behalf of their country with each other to adjust the laws of their country to adhere to this standard.The contracts say that you have a certain time for implementation, and whoever doesn't implement the law is being fined (there is a chain of measures, which you can also appeal to).

Since Greece agreed to the contract, they have to implement it.

With the (expensive) data retention directive -- which has been ruled unjustified in some countries already -- countries have a chance to make a good case to the EU for rejecting it. But then the directive has to be overruled and the contracts have to be cancelled in some way -- ideally without anyone losing face.

When the ministers agree a directive would be a good idea to implement, and then when it's time to implement the consensus is that the directive is a bad idea, the blame has to go somewhere. Usually the ministers make themselves small in the country, and everyone blames the EU for imposing bad laws on the innocent countries -- disregarding that the countries agreed to the very same law and made a specific contract with each other.

Actually those representatives can't do much : they don't have legislative iniative ( they can't create laws ) , they can only reject, amend or propose legislation

In your haste to vent, you've neglected to mention the Council of Ministers, which is absolutely the most powerful of the lot since nothing happens without their approval. (The Council is made up of the relevant national elected representatives of each member state in the relevant area; e.g., for agricultural business, it is made up of agriculture ministers.) Since they have the power to kill any proposal stone dead, the Commission always tries to make sure they're happy before bringing any proposed directi

Actually those representatives can't do much : they don't have legislative iniative ( they can't create laws ) , they can only reject, amend or propose legislation

Which means they can do a lot - if the EP doesn't like it, it doesn't become law. Having the right to initiative would be great, but lack of it doesn't make the EP powerless (especially since they can (try to) amend proposals in the co-decision procedure).

Only the European Commission can do that, and the members of this commission are not elected by the people, but proposed by the European Commision , and elected by the European Parliament.

Simply put : if you don't like the laws the EU is making , you can't punish the lawmakers for it, because you can't elect them.

If national governments or the EP don't like what the Commision is doing, they can refrain from giving them a second term. Also, the EP can dismiss the Commission (and has done so in the past [wikipedia.org]).

Also, while the European Parliament can block laws being passed by the European Commission , how like are they going to do that, knowing that they lose all chance of ever being proposed to join the European Commission.

Why is it undemocratic? The Council of the European Union has a democratic mandate because they're representatives of democratically elected governments (and can be sent home by voters if they don't approve), and more importantly, directives have to be approved by the European Parliament, who are elected directly. (Obligatory link [wikipedia.org])

Well, first of all your process better describes the EU under the previous Maastricht Treaty than under the current Lisbon Treaty that came into effect in 2009. Now both the European Commission and the European Parliament - which is voted in directly - has to approve of directives. Secondly, there is a problem here with time. For example here in Norway we're required to implement the Data Retention Directive that was passed in the EU in 2006 but we still haven't done it. And no matter how much we vote now for different politicians and new ministers it's impossible for us to get out of this agreement. Our own parliament has been effectively neutered so it can't actually do anything. If the government passes a bad law, we can elect a new government and change the law. If they agree to a bad EU directive, we're fucked.

If anything, invalidating intellectual property laws is a good way to increase competitiveness, something that Greece needs badly. It's also a very cheap and painless way to go about it.

It's not random chance that economies like China or India that don't cater as much to the monopoly damage of IPR tend to grow much faster. The odd thing is that many supposedly free-market proponents actually seem to believe that implementing what is in effect a significant private taxation system on the economy is somehow g

It's not random. They are copying us - thus they don't want IP laws (China more so then anyone else.).

Brazil, India and China's is based on convergence. Get the basics right (education, infrastructure, workable business law & regulations), then all you have to do is copy what the west has already done. The majority of China's growth is not sexy - it's basic industrialization that the west has already done.

Now, jump forward 0 to 40 years depending on the industry.In order to grow China et. al will have t

Radical capitalists realise the only way to get change through is during times of disaster. It just so happens that the GFC is a brilliant opportunity to dismantle 'socialist' Europe. Almost as if it had been done on purpose...

I have news for you: in pretty much every country, politicos and powers-that-be mostly care about (1) lining their pockets and (2) being reelected to carry on lining their pockets for a few more years. Oh and yes, a sizable bunch of them also get off on power and control, and seeing their own faces on TV. At any rate, precious few care about their constituents...

"The order seems to be general and descriptive, and is a manifestation of the implementation process for an even more general and vague larger-scale EU directive, which is the common source that caused the rulings recently posted on slashdot regarding the UK, the Netherlands and Finland."

Can anyone point to the larger-scale EU directive referred to in the summary? I've missed the news on any such directive having been passed. To date I was under the impression at EU level, all such directives have been in quite the opposite direction so I'd be intrigued to see where this one came from.

Because that's just one of several.Basically, because several governments couldn't establish stuff like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zugangserschwerungsgesetz [wikipedia.org] on a national level under the guise of terrorists/drugs/aliens/ponies/kiddie porn they're now using the the EU level to push through directives like above, active participation in ACTA/TRIPS or they just take a chance and simply enact bullshit taken straight from this week's MAFIAA newsletter (e.g. Spain).

Along with the rest of us. it is pretty obvious that the cartels are gonna take the Internet and turn it into a home shopping network. Of course the politicians will be happy to do this because not only will they get to cash some MAFIAA checks but after the Arab Springs they are naturally afraid that some tea party or occupy style movement might actually get all the screwed over public to demand they do more than bullshit and cash checks.

So what we need here isn't public outcry, we have seen how worthless t

Since Google messed up their search results to supposedly reduce bogus results, I notice that search results are actually much less useful and return more shopping crap and other spurious marketing junk.

It's not only me who has noticed that, then?Where we used to find wikipedia and real articles at or near the top, there's now pages up and down with shopping results for anything that could possibly resemble the search term. And it suddenly got far worse after the latest overhaul.

With the dumbing down of the search line for iFolks, with quotes, plus and minus no longer doing what they did, it's really hard to avoid it.

In Google's world, it would be ideal if only advertisers and potential advertisers could

It was one of the reasons I switched to DuckDuckGo. The zero-click box at the top usually contains the wikipedia article and a few other relevant links (e.g. code search results, IMDB), and the rest of the results are about as relevant as Google's are now, although not as good as Google's were a few years ago.

Not every post on slashdot requires you to to try to apply your favorite logical fallacy, you know:)

And besides - as CmdrTaco used to say whenever people whined about this sort of thing - this is a US-based site. As such it sometimes focuses on American technology and politics. And it inherently uses American English idiom, so get over it.

And to even think about making out you have to already know what "making out" means. (hmm, I meant that as another exam

I see the usual pattern of passing evil laws / precedents when the people are too busy worrying about something else (say, like food and the roof over their heads). As the economic crisis in Greece continue to unfold, expect more unjust but relatively minor (from a purely survival point of view) laws to be passed, simply because the people don't care. It's okay if you take away some of our rights so long as we get food on the dinner table

The last paragraph simply states "similar decisions have been implemented by other member states that protect intellectual rights without restricting user rights "In any event, it is simply an arms war... any child in primary/high school knows how to get around blocking Facebook and other sites. So effectively the message is

"Good luck with that"

In fact the funniest part of the whole thing is that it appears that the public with their vote is actually pressuring governments to let them pirate, hence the la

What really sadens me is that copying is such a fundamendal part of our human existence without it none of us would be able to survive. We cannot even learn language without copying. Now we want to artificialy control it.

Greece is out of the Euro. Whenever so many politicians say, "We would like for Greece to stay in the Euro, but . . . ", they are really just wiggling around the truth a bit. It is similar when they say they all want peace, when the tanks are already rolling.

The whole matter is going to be rather unpleasant for all parties involved. And even for those not involved. The EU taxpayers (especially in France and Germany) will lose billions. The Greeks will need to readjust their wages to be internationally competitive again. In other words, right now they cost way more than they are worth. See "The Economist" for details on this: www.economist.com .

So leaving the Euro, will also mean repudiating international debts to fund the new Drachma. And nationalizing industries, including foreign owned ones. This has all been threaten by Alexis Tsipras, leader of the radical left Syriza party, who will probably end up leading Greece after the elections next month. The Greeks can't bear the austerity measures any more. They want the Euro, but they can't afford the cost of staying in. Unfortunately for the Greeks, they don't realize that things will be worse with the Drachma, because the government will have no money to pay them. Since the foreign banks won't lend them any more money, they will just have to print more, causing inflation, and making the currency worthless on the international market.

So what will they care about claims of piracy? Go ahead and try to collect any money from them. The simply will not be able to pay.

This is all not going to sit well with the rest of the EU. The repudiation of debts will lead to private law suits, and Greece will find itself afoul of EU laws. So a bigger danger, is if they will be able to stay in the EU itself any longer.

So this legal issue is just like "fireflies before the storm," when compared what is to come.

To leave the Euro they must first leave the EU, as there is no other method for leaving the Euro.

You got yourself confused- I wont even link wikipedia because it is trivial to click a bit, read and see for yourself that the Eurozone, the Euro, and the EU are not connected the way you might think.

E.g. an area may use the Euro without being part of the Eurozone and/or the EU; a country may be part of the EU without being in the Eurozone; a country may have special trading agreements with EU countries without using the Euro OR being in the Eurozone, or without even being a member of EU; and perhaps a few

Unfortunately for the Greeks, they don't realize that things will be worse with the Drachma, because the government will have no money to pay them. Since the foreign banks won't lend them any more money, they will just have to print more, causing inflation, and making the currency worthless on the international market.

Your forgetting something very important, something Tsipras understands better then you do. If Greece as one of the oldest EU members, drops out of the Eurozone, it will push more people to do the same.

Fact is the way the Euro dollar was introduced was flawed from the start, having a pan-European currency and everyone's prices regulated to make them equal, and yet wages were never adjusted, nor was the conversion between the various currencies and the Euro to make things more evenly adjusted.

Unfortunately for the Greeks, they don't realize that things will be worse with the Drachma, because the government will have no money to pay them. Since the foreign banks won't lend them any more money, they will just have to print more, causing inflation, and making the currency worthless on the international market.

You are buying right into goverment & systemic propaganda, 100% of the money in the assistance package go to the banks and for repaying the debt. Salaries and pensions have for years being paid by tax money and other income. All these years the borrowed money was channeled to banks and dubious private investments. The fear of being unable to pay public sector salaries and pesion is fueled by the goverment and the ruling class in order to limit resistance towards the austerity measures.

Okay - I barely ever post... but I saw this and just thought... "Really?"
With the current Eurozone crisis, the fact that Greece have practically already defaulted on their debts, and the ever increasing likely hood that they will exit the Euro, is this really something which they should be working on?
Personally, I'd just like to see them put a little bit more effort into reclaiming the billions of Euro in taxes owed due to a majority who aren't declaring their income...
Just my 2 (euro)cents...